Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination in the context of "Third-wave feminism"

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A Democratic party member, he represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009 and was the 47th vice president under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965 and the Syracuse University College of Law in 1968. He was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and the U.S. Senate in 1972. As a senator, Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and Foreign Relations Committee. He drafted and led passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act. Biden also oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991 but voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. Biden ran unsuccessfully for the 1988 and 2008 Democratic presidential nominations. In 2008, Obama chose him as his running mate, and Biden was a close counselor to Obama as vice president. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, and they defeated Republican incumbents Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

Joe Biden served as a United States Senator representing Delaware from January 3, 1973, to January 15, 2009, then served as Vice President of the United States from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden was narrowly elected to the Senate in 1972 and won re-election six other times; having served for 36 years, he remains Delaware's longest-serving U.S. senator. As a senator, Biden drafted and led the effort to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act. He also oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including the contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. He resigned from his seat to serve as Vice President of the United States under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017; making him Senate President.

As a county councilor, Biden ran against incumbent Republican J. Caleb Boggs in 1972, after facing no Democratic rivals. He ran under a small-scale family-run campaign, but his energy and voter connectivity appealed to the public. After Biden was elected, his wife and infant daughter died in a car accident. Biden was persuaded not to resign and commuted to Delaware throughout his Senate career to care for his two sons, Beau and Hunter, both of whom had survived the crash. He married Jill Tracy Jacobs in 1977; their daughter Ashley was born in 1981.

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American lawyer and jurist who has served since 1991 as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. President George H. W. Bush nominated him to succeed Thurgood Marshall. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and has been its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. He has also been the Court's oldest member since Stephen Breyer retired in 2022.

Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia. After his father abandoned the family, he was raised by his grandfather in a poor Gullah community near Savannah, Georgia. Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church but became dissatisfied with its efforts to combat racism and abandoned his aspiration to join the clergy. He graduated with honors from the College of the Holy Cross in 1971 and earned his Juris Doctor in 1974 from Yale Law School. Upon graduating, he was appointed as an assistant attorney general in Missouri and later entered private practice there. He became a legislative assistant to U.S. senator John Danforth in 1979, and was made Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education in 1981. President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) the next year.